We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mackenzie Foster a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mackenzie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We believe kindness is contagious and so we’d love for you to share with us and our audience about the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

I feel like the kindest thing someone has done for me in this business is support me and the new products I come up with. I try to keep my business very personal – my business is named after my grandmother, Evelyn James. I name all of my dresses after my best friends and their daughters, I have my daughter and my best friends daughters in all of our photo shoots so I try to keep everything very personal which I feel like makes it very special. My friends and customers have been absolutely supportive and constantly make my heart happy when they help market my products. I think the kindest thing we can do as women is support each other and have each others back, I try to do the same for friends and vendors alike.

Mackenzie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi, I am Mackenzie Foster born and raised in Dallas. I moved to Houston over 20+ years ago and call Houston home now. I have been working for Kit, a women’s custom clothing company for 3+ years. I love my job but also wanted to call something my own. Being in sales for over 15+ years I wanted to bring the experience of what I have learned in retail and combine what I knew in my sales experience. I had a wedding a few years ago where my daughter needed to be a flower girl, I found the options out there either poorly made and cheap or overly expensive. So we decided to hatch Evelyn James where we run this sister brand through the same studio as Evelyn James. Since we already had talented seamstresses and amazing vendors it came to fruition pretty easily. I think what sets us apart is that we can really customize and personalize the experience. We have turned grandmothers & mothers gowns into flower girl dresses, embroidered bible verses on communion outfits, match the bridal party with custom satin options. For example: if you love one of our dresses we have as a sample and want to add length, tulle or floral applique, we can do that for you. I am very proud of the products we make and it is very rewarding to see a sketch or idea come to life!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Merin, the founder of Kit and who is a well known dressmaker in Houston is my business partner and I am very proud to have her as my business partner. She brings creativity, talent and over 10 years of experience in making high end, quality custom clothes.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Merin and I hired an external marketing company, paid for Google ads, some marketing on Meta and put up our website. All of these factors of course are costly but we both put in our own money to do so with no investors.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://evelynjames.co
• Instagram: @evelynjamesllc
• Facebook: Evelyn James LLC